


Super Blue Blood Moon

by seaofolives



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Canon Era, Character Death Fix, Everybody Lives, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Marvel 616 References, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Marvel Norse Lore, No Incest, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2019-11-18 05:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18114659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofolives/pseuds/seaofolives
Summary: 5 times Loki left + 1 time he stayed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by Sleeping At Last's _Super Blue Blood Moon_ which kind of plays in my head in the last chapter. Also I started writing this fic on November last year and took several breaks so nothing here makes sense from the _Captain Marvel_ and _Avengers: Endgame_ context anymore.

Time traveling, a trip to Hel and back, several escapades into the four (five, six, he’s not even sure anymore) corners of the cosmos and not to mention, a crash course into the laws of the Multi and the Micro Verse…this was by far the most educational, excessive and expensive hero work that Thor had ever done in all one-thousand and five-hundred years of his life. 

And all of them, all the trouble that he went through, led him back to this one critical moment in his life—in Wakanda, Storm Breaker in his grasp, the Mad Titan mortally wounded by his hand but not quite dead, not quite dead _yet_. 

It plays, like so many nightmares and regrets do, in slow motion: Thanos groans, he raises his gauntlet to snap. 

Now. Now! _Now!!_

“Loki,” Thor cried to the empty heavens, “ _now!_ ” 

It works, as all things do with the sorcerer, like magic: a flash of green slices the air over Thanos’ shoulder and Loki _falls_ through the portal, arms and legs out for balance, a sword glowing red in one hand. Laevateinn—dwarf-forged and plucked from the gates of Hel. He starts to swing as Thanos turns to the sound of his reappearance, reaches for the golden glove with one hand as with the other, he throws his chosen blade down with all abandon. 

Steel cuts through flesh, muscle, bones, air. 

Thor had forgotten the idea of breathing as he watched the purple and gold stump tear free of the roaring Titan. Loki is on the ground, bending forward, pulled by gravity. 

Storm Breaker is up and off the meat it had bitten. He swings him back over his shoulder, blade lying flat. It’s not too late—not anymore. 

His ax cuts through Thanos’ neck like a heated knife in butter. The silence is instant. Thanos’ head does a little thump-thump on the earth while the rest of him follows it to the ground soon after—and then everything is finally still. 

_That’s_ when he starts breathing—in heavy gasps, absurdly loud and vulgar, like he was overacting. Thor couldn’t begin to control it, though, his electrified nerves. Was he crying? No, that was just sweat dripping… 

Feet shift on the dirt. When he could finally pry his eyes away from the open neck (ugh), he caught Loki pulling himself back up to the fullness of his height, himself panting with shoulders that looked like they were suddenly too heavy to bare. 

Loki raised the frozen hand in the gauntlet to point at him. “You couldn’t have called me a little sooner, could you? You had to wait until he was _this close_ ,” he shook the gauntlet, those two fingers barely a centimeter apart, “before you went and did it.”

Thor shook his head. Both their eyes were squinted tight. “It wasn’t my choice. Strange said I had to wait until the time was right.”

“Time,” Loki repeated, dropping now both blade and stump, sagging a little backwards. “Gods, I hate time magic.”

“Yes, so do I,” Thor looked around them, “but it’s done now, isn’t it? We’ve won. Right?”

Loki kicked on the headless form of the Titan. “Looks about as dead to me as I’m alive.”

Thor suddenly laughed, albeit one that was no different than a wheeze, opening up suddenly with a smile. Any brother in his position (provided one was gifted with deitic proportions of blessings) would be used to feeling like an only-son by now but an Alive Younger Brother was, for once, a nice and refreshing change of pace. It reminded him of some of his more favorite romantic sagas of the past when he was young, much younger than he was now, where the hero had saved the day and everyone else to boot. 

A sentiment which seems to echo out to the rest of their band of friends. “Loki!”

That was Bruce Banner, waddling in his unisuit after what Thor could only imagine was a series of wild rodeos. “Oh my God,” his hands came up. 

And then he was hugging Loki and clapping him fondly as if Loki had never tried to get him killed, or he had never smashed him around like a useless doll but Thor supposed all debts were paid between them now. Loki’s arms flew up as if in disgust, so he did not have to touch the man, and his eyes went wide in his shock. “You came through,” Banner went on, still intoxicated with relief, all smiles at his once-adversary. “I can’t believe it, you’re actually alive!”

“Your Majesty,” the new voice was as clear in the Wakandan silence as sparring blades were in the quiet air of an Asgardian morning—or maybe that was just Thor, who whirled at first note to see the swordswoman, the fiercest warrior he’d ever known, his valkyrie, strutting into the scene, hair down, cape out, Dragon Fang in hand. 

Brunnhilde, the fatigue of battle, painting her face, nodded to the sugary reunion, Bruce still patting Loki to ascertain he was very much corporeal, Loki trying to bat him off with both hands full. “You did it. Your plan worked.”

“Yes, well,” Thor shrugged, crossing his arms, putting on a chummy smirk, “I did say so, didn’t I?”

“You’re trying to impress me but it won’t work,” she groaned, running the back of her free fist over her forehead, sweeping stray locks off her face. Her hair was plaited into a tight cord, not quite Thor’s favorite look on her—but he always loved it when women’s hair flowed freely in the wind, like fire—but one he could nevertheless appreciate. She walked with the jaunty gait of a true viking from the glory days of his youth, and it was one that settled him as the sea might lull a sailor. “I just went through scores of black crawlers, hoards upon hoards of them. What the Hel are they and where the Hel did they come from, anyway?”

But when they reunited, she tipped herself towards him and fell in contact, her head landing on his shoulder, Thor’s arm flying of its own will around both of hers. Since the death of half their people…or whatever it was called now after it was all undone, Thor and Brunnhilde had been nigh inseparable, picking up the burden of heroes inasmuch as they were drawn to it…and each other. 

Thor had constantly found his own eyes magnetized to Brunnhilde’s movements, the shape of her arms or the way her sword rested so easily on her hip but kept such meaningful observations at the back of his mind…until now. Now that they had won, and he’d gotten his people and his brother back, and it was all…over. And he could smell the oil in Brunnhilde’s hair, feel the heat of her skin on his… 

He forgot all about her question. 

“You got any plans of putting that down?” she asked him suddenly. “It’s freaking me out.”

She’d shocked him out of his stupor and he was stumbling away, unlooping his arm around her before he lost it to the bite of the Dragon Fang. But when she looked at him, she only gave him a mildly annoyed look before she turned her attention elsewhere. 

To his brother, he realized soon enough, when he followed her gaze and who must have been the intended recipient of her sudden inquiry. Loki had, finally, managed to extricate himself from the giddy Banner but his hands were still attached to his sword and, well, another hand. Loki gave Brunnhilde a blank look before he noticed the stump affixed to his fingers. 

Thor’s heart skipped a beat, then. Just when he thought everything was over, he’d completely forgotten that his brother…had a rather lengthy and colorful history with the stones. A lot of their recent bad blood had been caused by these cosmic gems and now… 

Well now, Loki, _finally_ , had them in his grasp. He’ll have to carve the stump out, and the gauntlet would be too big for him but with the reality stone, it wouldn't be a problem. 

And all this, he thought, must have been going on in Loki’s head as he raised the disembodied glove and stared at it in wonder. How much had he coveted for those gems? What was he going to do now that he had them? 

“Loki?” Thor beckoned to him, sounding perhaps a little too hopeful than was healthy for their relationship, and his emotions. 

His brother didn’t respond, and Thor started to fear for everything. It took him a beat to realize that the gauntlet was soon falling, and dropping to their feet with an empty clatter. 

Loki had tossed the most powerful weapon in recent history, as though it were junk. He looked up to Thor’s eyes then, and said to him, _No._ Thor didn’t need to hear him say it, he could read it off his face. 

Thor smiled proudly at his brother—here was a man who hungered for power, and now refused it. He reached over to clasp him on the shoulder, squeeze it. 

Loki understood the contact. He nodded, putting on a little smirk. 

They gathered in the seat of Wakandan power, all of them tattered and weary, moving like ghosts or ghouls despite their hard-won victory. After all the howling and the singing and the dancing had passed, it was like the very spirit that had once filled their empty shells had fled with the enemy’s.

Thor was among those select few who were permitted into Princess Shuri’s laboratory to witness the destruction of the six Infinity Stones. Loki stood next to him, both of them somber observers, but was not allowed to take part in the ceremony. With the might of his sorcery, he was considered as a backup should the main players fail in delivering their task. That was the official story, of course. The unspoken agreement was that he was the backup that would never be used, and everyone knew both Thor and his brother knew this.

Wanda Maximoff led the last job of the day, next to Vision with his new stone, furnished by none other than Shuri herself. She, too, took part in the destruction, standing across Iron Man, both their beams trained to high intensity towards the gems.

It was almost unreal how it was all over as soon as it had started—at the end of the day, the Stones were really just stones, after all. Hyper-powered, but behaving like any matter created by the universe. They left the room in a silent procession.

“So what happens now?” Loki asked him, turning as his heavier arm landed around his brother’s shoulder.

“Now?” Thor repeated, that familiar bud of hope blossoming at the root of his chest again. Hope. Such a strange and cautious word but right now, Thor didn’t mind using it. He smiled at his brother who raised his brows curiously at him. “Now we go home. Or we find a new home. T’challa has offered his kingdom to us until we find a more suitable location.”

“This place seems suitable enough,” Loki commented, casting his gaze around the high ceiling, the clean walls humming with secrets. “It’s rich, and well-protected.”

“It’s not ours, Loki.”

“We could make it.” Green eyes flew to meet him, flashing briefly.

“Loki,” Thor stopped them in their steps, turning his brother around so he could look at him closer, leaning slightly. His hand fell on Loki’s nape, keeping him in place. “We don’t have to,” he went on, speaking quietly.

Loki’s eyes could not stay still but he held their attention. He offered a smile but Loki only dropped his gaze, his brows furrowed softly, as if he couldn’t grasp the idea of _not_ conquering something.

He broke out to a grin and a little laugh. Ahh, Loki. He thought it was funny of him. He clapped his brother fondly and stirred them back to the path. “We’ll find our own place soon enough,” Thor assured him as they marched on. “And everything will be right again.”

A week later, Tony Stark flew to Wakanda to offer them the good news: he’d found a remote plot in Broxton, Oklahoma and had bought it for the people of Asgardia--a new name for a new kingdom. A new life. A new beginning.

“ _I’ll transfer it to your name as soon as we get your legal status sorted out with the state,_ ” Tony’s hologram informed him as they marched to the helm of the freighter that would take him and his people home—a final service by the King of Wakanda to the King of Asgardia. “ _Don’t have to pay me upfront, we’ll consider it your starting capital to get you settled. Of course, I’m expecting you to keep an eye on the weather when Pepper and I get married again._ ”

“Yes, I’m sure that can be arranged,” Thor assured him, turning to face the hologram. “You know, I wish I could offer you an Asgardian wedding. I would have opened my father’s most precious barrels for you. The whole kingdom would have celebrated you for nine days and nine nights.”

“ _I’m gonna hold you to that when the baby pops,_ ” Tony warned him with a finger, and Thor accepted it with a nod. He looked at his wrist after, tapping it. “ _Whoop, that’s me. I gotta get outta here. I’ll swing by south once you’re all settled._ ”

“Thank you, Stark,” Thor said, watching the hologram fizzle out.

His entrance to the cockpit was marked by a brief pause, every conversation in Wakandan and in All-Speak falling silent as each Asgardian turned to give him a respectful nod, except for the two who took front and center, both of them looking out to the plains through the expansive front window. 

“Ready?” he asked them as he stood between their shoulders, arms across his chest. His brother, Loki, only graced him with a quick glance. 

Brunnhilde was more generous with her response. “In about a minute,” she said, moving her hands up to the sword band around her waist as she turned to face him. “We’re just waiting for them to open up the shield for us. Protocol and stuff. And then,” she looked back to the Asgardians and the Wakandans hunched over the extensive dashboard, topped by a layer of holographic images both for their controls and their gages, “we’ll be on our way.”

Thor looked then to his brother, who snapped to him, brow popping in curiosity. “Ready to come home, brother?” It would be the first time in a while, he realized. For years, Loki hadn’t returned to Asgardian soil in peace. The first time since he fell to the wormhole, he had been taken as a prisoner. When he did come back, it was under the veil of a lie. 

This would be the first time he would be returning as the true prince of Asgard, with nothing to hide, without having cheated his way through the door. 

Loki smiled at him, features bright. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said. 

Thor beamed back. For days, he had been worried about his brother, who had seemed so ill-at-ease since the end of the Infinity War, which he had helped bring along. At first, he thought it was the Stones, like a boy missing his favorite toy, but he was cheerful enough whenever they should be together, and had taken command of their preparations for the journey home wherever Thor could not. Though often, Thor would catch him alone in the palace halls, deep in thought, or somewhere else within the kingdom, wandering on his own, where he would not have found him if not for Heimdall. But then, he always asked about home. But then, he was the Lord of Lies… 

But perhaps, Thor thought, Loki truly was just missing Asgard. Who wouldn’t? They had both been raised among its gold and glory, for all its tyrannical and bloody history. Asgardia would be different—he would build its foundations in peace—but he hoped it would not be too different to Loki’s liking. He wanted them both to build it together. 

One of the Wakandans in the company of an Einherjar came to call Brunnhilde’s attention. She went with them to wherever the Wakandan was pointing in the terminal. He was young, Thor observed, though he was watching Brunnhilde, with his hair worn long, bound in plaits and colorful beads and strings, the sides of his head shaved clean. 

“Nervous, Brother?” 

Thor snapped to Loki, and hoped he wasn’t blushing. One day, he will have to confess about his ginormous crush on Brunnhilde, whether he’d been caught or not, but there would be time enough for that, he decided. As any infatuated boy would agree. 

Loki smiled reassuringly to him. “You’ll be a great king. I just know it. Better than our father at any rate.”

Thor quirked a brow at his words, but could not hide his delight for the ego boost. “I hope,” he replied in honesty. “His boots will be too big to fill.”

“But perhaps you shouldn’t _have_ to fill them,” Loki said. “Perhaps that’s the trick of ruling.” He winked at his brother. 

Thor laughed briefly. “I take it this is the first advice of my royal advisor?” They’d spoken about his role in the court at length, and Loki had accepted. 

“Take it as you will,” Loki advised him. 

The radio clicked then, and a clear voice beckoned to them. “ _Ukuphakama Kwezulu_ ,” _Sky Pride_ , the name of the ship, “ _you are cleared for take off._ ”

Thor wasn’t nervous, then—at least not for the right reasons—when Loki had asked him about it…but he was _now_. They were cleared for take-off. They would be on their own soon. They would be departing Wakandan territory, and he would have no alibi left to protect him when he fails to be king. Now he _must_ absolutely take up the mantle as Asgardia’s ruler, not just in name but in _being_. The people will look to him as they forge their way into this new frontier. If they fail, it would all be on him…

He’d almost missed the goodbyes that passed him, Wakandan soldiers and engineers giving out their blessings as they departed the cockpit, leaving only a skeletal crew of their brothers and sisters to man the aircraft going to Asgardia and back to Wakanda. The young one with the long hair and the shaved sides passed him with a smile. Thor smiled back. For whatever it was worth.

“Hey,” Brunnhilde called him softly, taking her place next to her liege. “You look like you’re about to shit bottles.”

“I feel like I can do that better than rule an entire people,” Thor confessed, against his better judgment.

Brunnhilde cackled, but brought her fingers around Thor’s and he latched onto them like a rope. “We’ll be fine,” she assured him. She leaned to search his other side. “Where’s Lackey?”

Rightful prince though he was, Brunnhilde would never so easily forgive him for what he did to her back in Sakaar. This was just a fact of the matter that Thor and Loki must accept. Thor turned to his empty right, and then searched the cockpit for the familiar face of his brother. “Loki?” he beckoned. 

Everyone else present simply turned him a clueless eye. The vessel hummed subtly beneath his boots, and he can feel gravity pulling at his bowels. They were flying. Thor felt uneasy. “Where is Loki?” he demanded of his Einherjar.

Two of them looked at each other for clues before one of them replied, “We’ve never seen him since we began preparations, My King.”

_Tricked._ It was an illusion, all of it! Thor’s heart sank—Loki was gone. Again. He didn’t know where to start looking, or how or if he _should_. This was _Loki_ , a man who could hide in plain sight. Except from—

“Heimdall,” he cried suddenly, whirling for the door. Heimdall would know where to find him. 

As Heimdall knew he was needed. Thor’s world seemed to stop at his gatekeeper and most trusted friend’s presence in the cockpit. At any other occasion, he might have been delighted by the man’s foresight to come to his call, but this time, it only seemed to fill him with dread. 

And Heimdall did nothing to help him, only clasped his hands before him, and said to him, “I think you already know what I’ve come to tell you.”

Loki was gone. Again. Just when Thor had been _so close_ to bringing him home for good. He started back to the wide window where the plains of Wakanda had fallen from his feet, those Wakandans who had aided them in their departure staying long enough to see the task through. Some were giving them a proper send-off, others were waving.

One watched with a silent look about his face. He looked young, with his hair worn long, the sides of his head shaved clean.

He should have expected this, he thought. He was used to being on his guard around his brother, but then Loki had said he wouldn’t miss his homecoming for the world. And Loki had agreed to become his royal advisor.

“My King.”

But Loki was the Lord of Lies...

Thor turned again to one of his Einherjar, standing between Brunnhilde and their Wakandan pilot. All eyes were on him, awaiting his command. 

For the last time, he looked out to Wakanda, to where his brother stood, waiting to be left by his people. With a heavy heart, he said his goodbye, and finally nodded, giving the signal to depart. For whatever it was worth, he thought, as their vessel zoomed up to the skies, this was what Loki would have wanted.


	2. Chapter 2

Before he knew it, a whole Midgardian year had passed. Thor could never get used to how fast time flew in this planet, nor could he remember the last time he’d been around to enjoy Earth’s festivities. He wondered if it had been during the age of the Vikings, in some great king’s longhouse or other, or if he’d had a taste of the more modern celebrations and was maybe too disappointed by the lack of revelry that it was easy to forget.

If his younger self found out what kind of party he’d joined again to welcome the new year, he had no doubts that he would have been sorely disappointed, both at the company and his grown self. But Thor had never been gifted with foresight, for better or for worse.

So now he found himself in the penthouse of a classy hotel, reserved for Tony Stark’s private party. Instead of raucous laughter from drunken Norsemen, there was soft music playing, jazz they called it, the quiet tinkle of glasses and some fairly responsible laughing. Instead of the king’s mead, what he carried in his hand was a bottle of cold beer. Store-bought, though probably expensive.

And he drank it alone—a concept that must have been so unthinkable for the young Thor who must constantly be caught in the press of bodies. As for this version of him, he was content simply to observe the clusters of people, each nursing fashionable, colorful glasses, from his place in the bar.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Tony said suddenly, reappearing at his side with two new glasses, each containing some intriguing blue and golden liquid. If there’s anything that _hadn’t_ changed, at least, it was Thor’s thirst for various kinds of liquor. “So what were we talking about?”

Thor grinned at the new refreshments. He knocked back his beer, accepted his proffered drink and clinked glasses with his friend. He finished it happily enough.

“My goddaughter,” he revealed soon enough. Before Tony had left him to greet another friend, he’d just been asked to be the soon-to-be-born Starkling’s godfather. He hadn’t accepted yet.

Tony swept his arms wide, then. “Hey,” he said. Then reached for Thor’s hand and shook it firmly. “Thank you, Thor. This means a lot, Pepper’s gonna go ballistic. Hey, is this weird for you?” he asked, a finger out to Thor, which later waved someone over the Asgardian’s shoulder to approach them. “I mean, technically, you’re a demigod.”

“A god,” Thor corrected him. He turned around in time to meet the waiter offering a tray full of dainty cakes in white paper. He took one of each, putting them on his wide palm.

“Whatever,” Tony said, taking just one for himself. “And then you’ll become my daughter’s _god_ father.”

“Are we talking about puns now?” Thor asked, bemused with the topic. He swallowed one cake down, crumpling the empty sheet it came in.

“Did you ever have one?” Tony asked him, biting into his one snack. “I mean…do gods have godparents and what do you call them? Seeing as a god’s parents are…”

“I’ve never had a god-someone,” Thor revealed, downing two more cakes. He picked the last one up between his fingers. “I was raised solely by my mother and my father. I _have_ heard many stories about Asgard’s greatest heroes and conquests from them.” 

“I guess that’s where the guidance part comes in,” Tony said as Thor finished his last cake.

“Oh, I’ll have many stories to tell her,” Thor added, smiling brightly as he looked down to the white sheet to crumple it. “The Battle of Manhattan is one I’m sure she will be fond of.” Only the last white sheet was not empty—it had a message written on it. A simple _Hi_.

Except one that was written in runic alphabets.

He whirled suddenly, holding his breath. His eyes scoured the handfuls of people standing together, smiling, laughing. 

A woman excused herself from one of them, putting her drink on a passing tray. She looked over her shoulder to meet Thor in the eye, still smiling. 

Then she turned, and started to walk out to the balcony.

Tony whistled as Thor faced him to excuse himself. The man raised his hands. “I solemnly swear not to tell Jennifer Walters about this.” Jennifer Walters was Bruce Banner’s cousin and a new member of the Avengers. And one Thor had found himself…constantly working closely with.

_This isn’t what you think,_ he would have wanted to insist on Tony, so defensive towards his good relations with Walters, but that would only entail an explanation Thor was not willing to commit to. So he simply excused himself, nevermind that he looked the guilty part, and hurried after the woman, dumping all his trash on some moving tray or other.

She moved slowly to his luck, although he imagined that was done on purpose so he could catch up. And he did, though maintained a safe distance between them until they could isolate themselves to the safety of the balcony. She looked far more graceful and beautiful than Thor could have ever imagined, with her long shoulders and her long arms...she was long! And slender. And the high slit and the low back of her dress was a spectacular choice to attract a willing partner for the night.

And that almost made him ruin everything by laughing. “You know, I really must admire you for not throwing up yet,” he commented suddenly, though they were still among people. “Are your guts made of uru?”

“Shut up,” she said without looking over her shoulder. “I’m trying not to give myself away by pissing myself with laughter.”

“Give yourself away? Really?” They finally reached the balcony. The woman waved to a pair of other women at the corner with her black-painted nails, a simple gesture that sent them back into the safety of the penthouse, freeing the balcony for their use. “Green dress, black hair, golden tiara? You know, for the Goddess of Mischief, you could use a little more creative input.”

“Listen.” Finally, Loki turned to meet him, green eyes looking up, smiling lips painted dark green perfectly. “Just because I’m playing my other gender doesn’t mean I can just forget about my brand. Besides, look!” She pointed to her tiara. “It has the Midgardian year on it.”

Thor crossed his arms. “You turn yourself into a woman, completely trick the humans into believing you’re one of them...and the tiara is the one you’re most proud of?”

“I’m fitting right in,” Loki explained, wrapping her arms around her ample breasts, decorated by a golden band, hanging by a chain. “These Midgardians are so fond of their years.”

“Leave them alone, Loki.”

Loki smirked at her brother. “You look good tonight, brother.”

“Did you really come all the way down here just to say that?”

Loki shrugged. “I could?” she said. Then more honestly, “I wanted to see you again, Thor.”

He wanted to see Loki, too—but he would never give his sister the pleasure of knowing that.

She looked around him, then, searching for someone. “Where’s Brunnhilde?”

“You didn’t know?” Thor asked, brows curling. With Loki, he’d always just assumed that she knew everything from the start. When she gave him only clueless eyes, he realized that the burden of the newsbringer fell on him…and it was still a little heavy for him to bear. 

“Brunnhilde and I,” he began, but did not know how to continue. Loki’s brows fell, and he knew she understood now. So Thor just sighed, and made a little shrug, a half-hearted attempt to smile. Loki clicked her tongue and reached out to pat him on the arm. “She and I…we agreed it wasn’t the right time. You know, it was a highly professional decision.” He nodded. Loki pressed her lips to offer the same support. “You know, me with the kingdom, her with the new Valkyrior…”

“I certainly hope you didn’t mistake me for a new friend when you followed me here.”

“No. I read your message,” Thor said to her. “Loki, why did you leave?” It was a sudden question that he never expected to spit out just like that.

And he could see by the way Loki stared that she was just as surprised as he was. It was not, however, a question he just came up with. It had always been in his mind, from the moment they abandoned Loki in the Wakandan plains, with an answer that was as elusive as his sister. He had come up with so many but none that were truly so satisfying.

Loki smiled slightly. “Remember when we were younger?” she began. “And you could hardly stay put in the castle? Father had banned you from coming down to Midgard and yet _still_ you went.” Her smile brightened up, if only to appeal to her brother’s sympathy to help her. “You were always telling him about your growth, your worthiness. Your independence, your freedom.”

“So you left because you wanted your freedom,” was Thor’s conclusion. It was…perhaps, not the kind of answer he was expecting from his sister…but neither was it the one he was looking for. When they had left Loki in Wakanda, Thor had decided that it was only fair, and generous, to give her more time for herself, for whatever reason. Perhaps to adjust to her new life, or perhaps she just needed some space to breathe. But to learn that all this time, it had been about her precious freedom all along…

It felt like an accusation. “Odin’s beard, Loki, did you _think_ I would have locked you up in Asgardia?!”

“You could keep me in Asgardia no more than you could stop me from leaving.”

“And what’s your point!”

“I can’t—” Loki began but stopped so soon, searching elsewhere for the continuation that evaded her. She gave up before long and threw her hands up. “Stay!”

“What?!” Thor stared at her in confusion. “Loki, we _literally_ just talked about this!”

“Thor, do you really, honestly think I could be contented in Asgardia?” Loki asked him. “You know who I am, you know _what_ I am. You know what I _do_. You know I can’t live the life you want for me, not without losing my mind!”

“Yes, and I don’t know what any of that has to do with Asgardia!” Thor persisted. He had expected Loki to fight him again for his stubbornness, and being the warrior bred in bullheadedness that he was, he was ready for it.

But Loki had always been the type to look for another way out, a different exit that would have left them blindsided. She smiled at him, then, and told him quietly, “You do. You do know that it all has to do with Asgardia.” She tossed her hand to him. “You’ve always been much smarter than you let on,” she said. And the worst part was that—she was right. Thor had always understood Loki’s actions, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

He’d lost his own battle even before he could defend it.

Thor so hated losing, and he knew the hurt was so readily etched on his face for Loki to read. Was it wrong for a brother to want his sister to come home with him? Was it wrong to hope? It wasn’t supposed to be but then Loki was making him feel like it was a heinous crime.

“You promised to be my royal advisor,” he reminded her.

“I promised Thanos my undying fidelity,” Loki shrugged, “and yet here we are.” Spoken like a true Lady of Lies. What else could he have expected from her?

There was a whistle that sang through the room. Thor and Loki turned to see Tony Stark raising his glass, standing next to his pregnant wife.

“They’re about to start counting,” Loki said, looking back to Thor. She nodded to the penthouse. “You should go and join them.”

“And I suppose it’s time for you to take your exit,” he sighed. He was done fighting a battle he couldn’t win. So be it.

Loki shrugged again. “Places to be, people to see. You know how it is.” Alas, Thor did. So be it, indeed.

She stepped back then to offer her hand to him. Thor took it.

But it was almost hilarious how both of them pulled each other to a warm embrace, and it was almost good enough for Thor to forget the sting of abandonment and defeat. Thor patted his sister on the back, and Loki brushed his consolingly.

“Happy new Midgardian year, Brother,” she said to him, squeezing him a little. For a woman of her built, this would have been nigh impossible—then again she was a goddess.

“I’ll see you around,” Thor replied to her. This, at least, he was more sure of. 

They parted then, hands still joint. Loki gave him one last wink before she faded into green dust—and then nothing.

It was only then that Thor had noticed the new device he so curiously suddenly possessed in his hand. They were starting to count down inside but he stayed out to look at his new acquisition in peace—something that resembled an antiquated communications gadget, with a blinking light at the top…or the bottom, depending on its truer orientation.

Still, it was a suspicious little thing that he was sure only special persons should have in their keeping. Why else would Loki be interested in it? And why else would she hand it off to him, except perhaps to hide it from other interested parties? Thor sighed, just as the penthouse cried, “ _One!_ ” and cheered, tooting their horns and clinking their glasses. In the distance, lights began to burst in the blue night.

“Oh, Loki,” he sighed, holding the device out to the colorful skies. “What the Hel have you gotten yourself into again?”


	3. Chapter 3

The answer soon became clear enough—when the Skrulls attacked.

This was not a development the Avengers could say they had been prepared for—although Thor, for his part, had to admit that he’d been expecting something like this to happen. There was no way Loki could have gotten involved with the Kree simply out of the goodness of his black heart. 

That was how the initial narrative had looked—the device that Loki had so selflessly bequeathed Thor turned out to be a locator for the Kree. They had lent it to Loki before they’re meeting, and had explained that they were looking for a child on Earth of Kree origins. 

They did not mention anything about the Skrulls—nor did they warn the Avengers about old ladies assaulting friendly neighborhood Spider-Men after helping them cross the street, demanding, “Where is the child?!” 

And now New York was on fire—because everything always had to happen in New York—and they were _just now_ discovering that apparently, a lot of New York’s upstanding citizens had been shape-shifting Skrulls all along! Waiting for their time to shine. 

One bad thing compounded into another, never mind that Thor was already worse off, this day being, by some terrible fate, the _one_ day Jennifer Walters had agreed to go out for coffee with him. But instead of spending a quiet moment together… 

…they were now out there, evacuating children from the nearby daycare center. It was times like this that Thor wished he was still in possession of Mjolnir. The hammer had not only been his weapon for as long as he could remember (which was _long_ for a god), she had also become his constant companion, almost like having another ally beside you who knew your every strength and weakness by heart. 

And, she was subtle, and could be taken around in dates. Unlike Storm Breaker who was big and long and had to be left at home. 

Leaving Thor with nothing but his raw fists and the storm at his beck and call. Every strike he landed burst with the blow of lightning, the skies cheering with a thunderous boom for every one he threw. They had proven to be a cathartic therapy to the scorned God of Thunder. 

But for the children, it was a nightmare, to be so close to such raw natural power despite the guiding hands that led them out to the open. In the midst of his crashing fists, his roars, and those of the Skrull robots which just seem to come from everywhere, he could hear them shrieking, some sobbing. 

And Jennifer growling to them, “Cover your ears. It’s all going to be okay. We’re the Avengers!” She fell then to hunch over with them behind a displaced car, a difficult task in her 6-foot form, and wrapped her arms around them, her green muscles already bursting through her court clothes. 

She turned to Thor flinging one electrocuted Skrull onto another batch and roared to him, “This is all of them!” 

“Good, now get out of here!” A plan quite literally shot from the sky with a photon blast that had just glanced him on the shoulder when he moved. If he hadn’t been some being of godly material, Thor swore he would have been incinerated by now. 

He fell back to the ground, ready to throw himself at the blasted aircraft aiming its cannons at him, lightning filling his eyes. He might have gone ahead and done it, had he not heard the groan and creak of metal as Jennifer raised her hiding place, the vehicle, over her head and roared, throwing the poor thing at the Skrulls, nose first. A direct hit. 

Thor laughed. “Nice shot!” Just because their date was compromised didn’t give him a reason to stop courting her. “Now get the kids out of here!” 

“I’ll find my cousin,” Jennifer assured him while she gathered the children in her arms, little hands clinging to her long hair, her tattered clothes, anything they could get at. 

“You said you were a lawyer.” One of them spoke up as she ran to one of the taller buildings that surrounded them, bare feet crashing on the concrete, leaving cracks in her wake. 

“I am but sometimes, even lawyers have to do the heavy-lifting. Now hold tight!” With one mighty kick, she launched herself up to the air, as only Hulks could. 

Thor picked himself up soon enough, careful with his battered shoulder. He started towards the corner, sorely missing Mjolnir’s easy flight when the skies cracked behind him, something he would have been familiar to had he been the cause of it. 

But when he turned and looked over his shoulder, all he could see was a wall. Falling. Right for him. 

There was no time to outrun it—gravity was pulling it faster than he could attempt. Thor growled at his latest misfortune with all the defiance he could muster, bunching up his fists, lightning on. He’ll have to punch his way out of this one, as a God of Thunder might. 

He hadn’t considered a different kind of exit—like a portal that sliced through the air, flashing green. Big enough for a full-grown man to jump out, half-flailing to crash onto him, shoving him to the ground. 

Straight through another portal. 

Thor landed on his face, the freshness of clean grass and the tangy sharpness of raw earth striking his nose as his savior clambered off him and let out a great grunt, as if he just threw his arm outwards for a great sweep, as Thor knew he was wont to. Something crashed from a distance. The smell in the air changed in that one instance, peppered now with a mixture of Asgardian spice, old rocks from an ancient wall, a fragrance that vaguely reminded him of his mother’s skin, tampered down by the clean scent of a frigid winter night. To many, this was what they liked to call _the stench of Loki Magic_. But to him, this was just his brother. Just one of those things he’d grown to love and live with. 

“What,” Loki began, a growl in his voice, “in the name of Heimdall’s nine mothers _were you thinking?!_ Were you even _thinking_ to begin with?!”

Thor groaned as he pushed himself off the dirt to his knee, shaking his head. Loki was pacing furiously, the frayed train of his cape fluttering wildly which was not at all helpful to his already winded state. “Would you stop shouting at me?” he demanded, getting up to his feet. “Why are you even shouting at me?!” 

“Because _you_ ,” Loki yelled, pointing him an accusing finger, something only _he_ could have the gall to do for all their difference in size and mass, “ _tried. To punch. A wall!!_ ” 

“For crying out loud, it was just a wall!!” 

“And where the Hel is your ax, anyway?!” 

“Who the Hel brings a weapon to a date, Loki—?! _Bah_ , I forgot who I was talking to—!” Thor jabbed his finger urgently up over Loki’s shoulder. 

“Well, at least _I'm_ not the oaf who’s going to get _murdered_ on his first date!!” Despite all the rage he was bursting with, he did whirl, following his brother’s warning. Overhead, a pair of Skrulls manning a singular scooter, like the ones the Chitauri had once brought to New York, were racing for them, the one at the back ready to jump off, its forearm morphing into a meaty cleaver. 

It was so easy for Loki to just reach for them, wrap his sorcery around their necks and fling them off their craft like a pair of paper dolls. He jumped back, giving Thor enough space to catch the careening scooter and send it hurtling to another pair on another scooter behind them. This one ended with a happy explosion. 

“Then I wouldn’t be murdered because there never _was_ a first date,” Thor snarled, turning to Loki. “This. Is all your fault, Loki.”

“My fault,” Loki repeated, indignation painting a stark picture on his face. He jabbed himself on the chest. “ _My fault?!_ How in the Norns’ dreams did this become _my fault?!_ ”

“Well, if you’d told me what the locator was all about, we would have been able to stop the Skrulls before _this_ ,” he pointed to the air, where another explosion blossomed in the distance, overpowered by the Hulk’s own roar later, “wouldn’t have happened!” he yelled.

Loki spread his arms out wide. “And how the Hel was I supposed to know what the locator was all about?!”

“Do you admit to having met with the Kree?” Now it was Thor who aimed an accusing finger at his brother.

“Yes,” Loki spat hastily.

“Do you admit to knowing about the child?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?!”

“You didn’t ask!”

“Stop lying to me!”

“I wasn’t lying to you!!”

“ _You lied by omission!_ ” Thor growled, glaring lightning at Loki’s furrowed brows. “If you’d told me the Kree and the Skrulls were going to look for a child, I would’ve found him before everything has started burning—!!”

Loki shoved him back, like a liar offended of being caught red-handed at his face, which would have only fueled Thor’s accusations if Loki’s green arm hadn’t darted out and come between him and a soaring shield that looked particularly familiar.

He whirled at the newcomer, demanding, “What?!” with his brother’s echo.

Steve Rogers caught his shield as it whirled back and slipped it onto his arm. “That’s enough!” he barked at both brothers. Beside him, his own brother-at-arms aimed an expensive machinery at them, silver arm out, glinting. A reminder of what he could do if they should ever decide to disobey his best friend. “This isn’t the time to be screaming at each other’s faces.”

“We were _talking_ ,” Thor snapped back.

“Sounds an awful lot like shouting to me.”

“You know,” Loki piped in, taking a step forward, “if you haven’t got anything more important to say, Captain, I advise you to stick a flagpole up your arse and be of some use to this failing land of yours!”

“You keep that up, you’d find more than just the Empire State Building up _your_ ass!” Barnes threatened in turn, flicking something on his gun. 

“Hey, shut up!” Thor warned him, finger out. “Point that thing somewhere that won’t start a war. He’s the royal prince of Asgardia and he’s my brother!”

“Yeah and he tried to kill me.”

Thor turned to stare at Loki. “You tried to _kill him?_ ” It couldn’t be true. 

Loki stared back at him. “Do you seriously want to talk about this now?” Odin’s beard, it was true. 

And the way he said it, it sounded like a long story. Thor muttered, “We’ll talk about this _some_ other time.”

“Get down!” 

They fell at practically the same heartbeat, his and Loki’s knees hitting the grass with a unified thud as they turned their heads up in perfect synchronization. Rogers raised his shield over him and Barnes. Higher still, an alien aircraft zoomed pass, heading for the structures behind the row of trees that surrounded them. 

“Got an intel on 40th street,” Barnes shared suddenly as they picked themselves up, for once shouldering his weapon as they followed the light craft with their eyes. “Sounds like it’s drawing enemy attention. What the hell’s going on there?”

“We wanna find out, we gotta start running.” With a few starting steps, Rogers began towards the same direction. “Come on!”

“Wait,” Thor stopped them, both men turning to him. “I have a better idea.” He, in turn, looked to his brother beside him. 

Loki smirked. “Thought you’d never ask.”

The one great thing about Loki’s involvement in all this, of course, was that he was a spectacular teleporter. 40th Street turned out to be where Wanda Maximoff, Natasha Romanoff and one of the newest additions to the Avengers, Carol Danvers lured the Skrulls to with a false promise of having the child with them. The child, which turned out to be less one and more a young teen, had been hidden all the way in Broadway where Tony Stark and Peter Parker had stood as his guardian until Stephen Strange could meet them in a rendezvous and call it a day. 

They were now sat around one of the doctor’s luxurious living rooms, the Avengers quite out of place from the opulence in their battered clothes and sour faces. 

Loki sat among them—being quite the rebel he was, he preferred the comfort of a console table, back to the wall, behind everyone, arms crossed. Strange had tried to magic him away from the furniture but that had almost devolved into a Contest of Champion Sorcerers until Wanda intervened. That was the only time Thor had truly noticed the change on his brother’s outfit, which had now traded the cape for a more functional green coat, its collar lined with downy fur, its cuffs frayed to match its train. What had happened to him in the days since they last met, he wondered, to have his clothing so ruined? Whatever had he seen? Gone through? 

“So let me get this straight,” Tony began, on his feet, hands out. The moderator of the discussion. “There’s a kid here on Earth, an American kid, and the Kree are looking for him because his parents are Kree? So why the hell would the Skrulls want him?”

“Because he’s only _half_ -Kree,” Romanoff revealed, with an ice pack on her bicep, and some of her weight on Barton who held a similar pack to the corner of his lips, head back to the wall and eyes closed. “The other half of him is Skrull.”

“Sounds exactly like the kind of intergalactic custody battle literally no one wanted to be a part of,” Tony snarked. 

“Look, couldn’t we just,” the boy Parker piped up, “find some intergalactic court and let them fight it out there? I mean there’s gotta be a planet around here somewhere that’s on neutral grounds or something.”

“You can’t give the Skrulls a chance on this boy.” Loki’s clear voice was a shock to hear, all heads whirling to meet his serious countenance. Beside him, Thor felt Jennifer Walters’ fist tighten on his forearm. He pressed a hand onto it, hoping she would relax. She was no longer looking green but she was still in her spandex suit which could expand at any moment’s notice, which made her exactly the kind of threat he wished to spare his brother. For the moment, that is. “They’ll only use him as a tool to expand their empire,” Loki continued, “and you’ve seen what they can and are willing to do without a legal heir.”

“I’m sorry but,” Tony pointed to Loki as he asked the room, “why is he here?”

“Loki is here because he has met the Kree who came in contact with us,” Thor explained, his deep voice snapping everyone’s attention to him. “He is involved in this business as much as we all are, and he is under my protection.” At the corner of his eye, he swore he could see Loki smiling. He made the conscious effort _not_ to reveal this knowledge, or the fact that he never expected to be jumping to his brother’s defense—and yet here he was. 

“You’re only saying that because he’s your brother, Thor,” Tony snapped at him with soft dismission.

“I’m saying this _exactly_ because he is my brother, Stark,” Thor reiterated, looking at his friend eye to eye. 

“Okay, are we issuing threats now?” James Rhodes interrupted them, eyes on Thor. 

“Can you all _stop?_ ” Danvers demanded suddenly with a clear warning look on everyone. “This isn’t the time and place for a dick contest! What’s important is that we get this kid to safety, and preferably somewhere where neither Kree nor Skrull could get their hands on him until we could figure this out.”

“That’s a bit of a tall order, isn’t it, Captain?” Loki interjected, brows knitted together for effect. “Considering you’re in Midgard which, as we all know _and_ have just witnessed, is quite the hotbed for intergalactic activity. Unless you were thinking of say, distant planets in far-off star systems that you may be well acquainted to then _maybe_ that could delay his overeager relatives for a short while.”

“Oh but what about some livable black hole? I mean there’s gotta be something like that in the universe, right?” Parker suggested. Danvers directed a stern eye on Loki’s direction. 

“You’re talking about a pocket universe,” Strange replied. “And I would personally advise against it. This is a place where neither time nor space exists which means that it could take the Kree and the Skrulls years to settle their differences and he wouldn’t age one day.” With a bemused smile, Loki shrugged at Danvers. Thor wanted to pinch him and glare at him if he knew exactly what was happening. Did he try to kill her, too? 

“Okay so…how about some underground shelter?”

“Loki seems to think we should just give him to the Kree,” Steve spoke up suddenly, eyes on his brother. 

Loki spread his arms out to make his point. “Well, between both sides of the family, I don’t recall them being the ones who wanted to blow up half of New York just for custodial rights.”

“Wait, are we seriously listening to this guy?” Tony again, palm to Loki’s face. “What part of Tried To Conquer The World Once are we forgetting here? He’s obviously got a contract with the Kree.”

“And you,” Loki began to laugh, leaning forward to prop his elbows up on his knees, “clearly believe that for your contributions to this realm and this boy’s survival, you have earned the right and the power to decide on his life.”

“Oh that’s not what you’re doing?” Tony challenged him, but where words alone failed him, his foot, moving a step closer to the interloper, spoke so much more. James Rhodes was up on his feet, and so was Thor, Jennifer Walters coming between him and the rich man, pressing a hand on his chest. Steve Rogers was barking for them to stand down. Clint Barton was suddenly alert. “Look, between the two of us, who’s antsy to get this kid to the Kree?”

“I once heard the tale of a boy who was ripped from his true parentage as a babe and raised to think he was someone else, all because of some misplaced benevolence on the part of his guardian.” Loki shook his head, frown dark. “That story never ended well.”

“Okay, knock it off you two, this isn’t helping!” Steve barked as Thor turned to face his brother, muttering, “Loki!” in warning. The truth was that he never expected Loki’s motives to be coming from a deeper, if dubiously honest, place, but he knew how messy this business was if they ever tried to unpack it with everyone’s emotions running high and against each other. 

Loki eyed him back in stubbornness. He should be on his side!

Thor shook his head. Not now.

“This kid isn’t going anywhere until we find out what the Kree and the Skrulls want from him,” was Steve Rogers’ decision, clapping Tony further back away from Loki on his shoulder. “Maybe he’s not human but that doesn’t matter. He’s still a life of his own and he still needs to be protected. Loki.”

All eyes turned to the Trickster as the Trickster looked up to the Captain.

“Any idea where we can find your contact?”

Loki smiled at the question. “Hmm,” he moaned. “Why don’t we ask the resident Kree expert?” Which he indicated with a slow turn of his face.

Carol Danvers eyed him, jaw tightening with tension. 

“Loki,” Thor beckoned to him, “this isn’t the time for games.”

Loki snapped to him. “Oh but then where is the fun in that?”

“Okay, you know what?” Carol Danvers flew up to her feet, the room somehow heating up with her motion as she glared at Loki who leaned back with his hands up. “New plan: let’s let my fists do the talking.”

Jennifer Walters raised her hand. “I second the motion.” Never mind that she stood next to Loki’s brother, even turning to face him as if daring him to question her words—and the sad part was that Thor wouldn’t. Because he knew exactly how she felt. 

Or Hawkeye when he echoed, “I volunteer to stick some arrows in his knees.” Really, Loki had quite the talent for making things worse for literally everyone involved. 

“For the record, I agree,” Tony chimed in because of course he had to, drawing everyone’s attention to him. “But, between Steve and Thor, I have a very distinct feeling that that’s not the kind of plan they had in mind.”

“Are you all done voicing your discontent, then?” Back to Loki, now on his feet, his arms crossed over his chest. “You know, with all this bickering and fighting, I don’t understand how any of you manage to achieve anything. I mean, if I were a Midgardian? A poor, helpless Midgardian? I would be _sorely_ worried for my life. You’re all here,” Loki shifted on his feet, closer to the one team in the whole universe who could literally disembody him, without a care for his own personal safety, “because you have all vowed that you are the best that this realm has to offer when it comes to protecting her.” A fact that seems to evade Steve and Tony who both turned to look at each other. 

“The Skrulls are coming,” Loki went on with his word of warning. “And there’s no stopping them. But whether or not you can pull yourselves together in time to beat them back is going to be what makes all the difference. And for your sake, and for the sake of the rest of this realm, I advise you to look for the Kree.” He eyed them all, as personally as he could even when Tony flung his hands up. “They can and will help you defend this realm against the Skrulls as long as neither of you get in each other’s way.” _If you get what I’m saying,_ was the implied meaning behind his raised brow and slight smirk. 

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” he started for the door, then, “someone has to go make sure the boy is still around.” Never mind that he would have to cross an entire room of superheroes to get out but that had never been a problem for Loki.

Not if he could phase through them. “Now just wait a second,” Jennifer protested stepping in his way. Thor tried to stop her but really, what was the use? He was already moving through her, gold and green sparkles and all. “Hey!” 

Thor had to move fast, chasing after his incorporeal form with the disadvantage of being very much solid and bulkily built while he was at it, but everyone else was powerless to stop a man who would not listen to them. 

Except him, because he was his brother. 

“Loki!” he called to him out in the hall, just when he thought he’d been about to lose him when he disappeared through the door. But his brother listened, and stood still, his back turned. Thor allowed himself a breath of relief. He resumed his approach. Maybe if he could talk some sense into his brother before the Avengers caught up to him, he could make this work. “You’re really going to leave without making introductions?”

Loki finally whirled to face him, looking bemused. “Well, your friends seem to think the words of a liar weigh hardly a feather.”

“Sometimes the truth can hurt, Loki,” Thor responded lowly, so he could trap the conversation between the two of them. Loki crossed his arms when he had closed the distance. “Fortunately for me, I am mighty,” he went on, looking at his brother in the eye. “Words can hardly hurt me.”

The liesmith smirked. “Famous last words,” he said. He could hardly have expected him to turn serious in a snap, this trickster who took everything as a joke. Unless of course, it was a matter of great importance to him. Such as this, it seems. “I know you don’t trust me, Thor,” he began, “and I wouldn’t give you any reason to, but heed my words just this once:” as though Thor had never listened to this mischief maker’s warnings. Once, perhaps, but he’d grown and known better since. “Go to the Kree. Do everything to save this boy’s life and liberty. You do this, and you would have also saved the fate of magic.”

“Magic?” Thor frowned. 

“He has a lover, a fledgling magician,” Loki continued. “A diamond in the rough but one who may soon rewrite the rules of magic itself. In time, he could be the most powerful sorcerer to ever make history.”

“How powerful?” Now Thor understood why his brother would only confide in him with this—none of the characters in that room held much of his respect. Among them, to him, Thor was the only one capable of comprehending the gravity of the situation. 

“More powerful than me and that cheat Strange combined.” Loki raised his hands in absolution. “Given the proper kind of guidance, of course.”

And there it was: the motive. 

Once upon a time, perhaps, he might have been let down by his brother’s vested interests—there was always something ulterior about his actions, something self-serving, never out of the goodness of his own heart. As soon as he understood that his brother would never change in the way he hoped, though, his predictability became a source of relief. It became easier to read him as soon as he accepted him for what he was, and for as long as Loki was still doing his thing, there didn’t seem to be any need for worry about his brother’s welfare. 

Thor smiled, half in bemusement. “Meaning you.”

“I didn’t say that,” Loki pointed out. 

Thor did a quick inspection of his surroundings as he took a step closer, massaging his wrist as perhaps, before a fight. “And you think we’re just going to let you get close to him?”

“And you think you can stop me?” Empty words, if Thor didn’t know any better. 

But everything could be read off of Loki’s smile, that glint in his eyes as he waited for Thor to say it. Ah, his brother. So predictable as always…and yet he should have seen that coming. 

“But you’re not even here, are you?” Thor said. 

Loki raised his hands again, as if to say _nothing to see here_ , and faded in a sparkling green mist. 

Thor sighed, dropping his head. There went his brother again. He should have known he was gone the moment he disappeared from their sight. By the time the others had reached him, Loki’s magic was nowhere to be found. 

“We need to go to the Kree,” Thor said, turning around to face his friends. “Loki is telling the truth.” Faces turned to each other, uncertain what to make of Thor’s words. 

“How can you be so sure?” Steve asked him. 

Thor smirked. “Because he’s my brother.”


	4. Chapter 4

Soon after their brief meeting with Loki, Thor and a handful of his comrades, particularly those who’d dealt with intergalactic relations, had sought out the Kree to intercede for them. Not long after that, they saw their alien friends come through with their promise in their time of need, and settle the differences between their side of the boy’s parentage and the other. No one doubted that this wouldn’t be the lasting peace the Kree promised it to be, although it definitely helped that there was a secret number of Skrulls who were sympathetic to their cause, and no one doubted that Thor’s negotiations would soon come right around to bite them back—as all arrangements concerning his brother tended to. 

So now, it was time to deliver _their_ side of the bargain. 

The Shi’ar were a pompous race of aliens who subscribed to an imperial government and liked to get involved in any matter that would either glorify their majesty in their eyes, or mar it—which tended to happen if they didn’t get their way about it. 

Or for this instance, if a group of highly skilled scouts, trained to hunt and stalk in any terrain in the known universe, had been beaten to a legendary weapon buried deep in some nondescript live volcano by no more than a pair of warriors who, not only lacked the advantage of numbers, but also the shadow of a plan. 

And this time, it was not his fault—just one of the three things Thor had going for himself as he stopped in his escape to empty out one of the blasters he’d purloined from their pursuers. To his defense, he _did_ have a plan—one that can be summarized by sneak in, get the damned thing, sneak out, try not to smite until smiting was absolutely necessary. It was not a genius plan, not exactly his most refined one, but it _was_ still a plan. 

Not one, however, that made room for Loki. 

“Loki,” he called to his brother as he backed up to the spacecraft, one last blaster in his hands, aiming it at Shi’ar, some unfortunate blue rock in this blue earth, _anything_ that could keep the imperial forces at bay. It was bad enough that Asgard would doubtless be on the receiving end of some form of vengeance because of what he was doing, it was worse that he couldn’t just blast them all off to outer space at the risk of making diplomatic relations much, well, _worse_ than they already were. “Anytime now!”

He listened to the chirping notes of a keypad making happy little beeps, and then the soul-crushing buzz of a failed combination. “Are you sure you gave me the right access codes?” Loki growled to him.

Thor finally reached him, glancing at the 9-digit keypad as Loki tried again, black-nailed fingers flying all across the panel. An instinctive motion brought his left hand to the dangling weight on his left hip, a rock as warm as sunshine bound in a bag woven by the best hands of Nidavellir. It did little to calm his raging nerves but he’d take what relief he could get. “Try again, press harder!”

“Harder?” Loki growled, now jabbing his finger on each square as deliberately as he could. In time, a delightful noise sang out in celebration and the main door flew up like a miracle. He growled and rolled his eyes. “So much for Stark Tech!”

“Yes, well, it wasn’t his fault that thing got blasted during my ingress,” Thor mumbled to himself as he marched back after Loki hurrying to the dead cockpit.

“You’re actually _defending_ him?”

“You’re asking me why I’d defend a man who’s never stabbed me in the back before?” He turned around to see Loki unbuckling his fingerless glove from his right hand and ripping the whole thing off his forearm so he could press his palm on the scanner at the dashboard, illuminating the glassy surface. “It’s voice activated, say your name!”

A pair of beams echoed into the empty ship. Thor retaliated with his own. A singular voice cried in pain.

“Loki,” Loki said to the panel, only to receive a grating buzz. “Loki Laufeyson,” he tried again, louder this time to the same effect. “Loki Odinson, Son of Odin.” Buzz-buzz. “Prince of Asgard, God of Mischief!”

“Loki!!” Thor roared between angry bursts of his blaster. At this rate, he could no longer distinguish the cry of his chosen weapon from the cries of its poor victims.

But he definitely heard his brother mutter under his breath, “Gods damn you and your future generations, Stark.” Before he practically yelled to the dashboard: “Thor’s Brother!”

A message received by the security system with a delightful shiver, illuminating the darkened hull and their overhead display as it said, “ _Welcome, Thor’s Brother._ ”

“Shut the damned doors!” Thor cried, less to instruct and more to ease his excited nerves, even as Loki fell on the main seat and began to do just that—seal the doors, activate the shield, set their course to the general direction of _out of there_.

“Grab on!!”

“Just fly,” Thor roared back, throwing his blaster to his feet.

Loki pushed at the steering wheel and sent them off to the air, tilting the entire spacecraft upwards without waiting for his brother to take a seat—but Thor did paw for purchase, somehow managing to stay on his feet even as they burst through the skies, every layer of the planet’s atmosphere, into the peaceful, endless night awaiting them just beyond.

The silence was almost overwhelming. Thor’s ears were filled by the racing of his heart and his own ragged breaths but somehow, it still felt to him as if he were suddenly trapped in a bubble, concealed from time and space and everything else in-between.

Loki joined him with a collected sigh soon enough, and a hard promise made in a softer voice, “One day, I’m going to murder Stark. But I’ll leave him alive long enough to see me hang him upside down by his own guts!” Soon enough, Thor’s ragged breaths would turn into choking laughter.

—

Thor had only come to know about Loki’s sometime-involvement with saving the world in one of their team meetings when Bruce Banner had mentioned it in passing. From what he understood, being a semi-Avenger was not exactly part of Loki’s plan (although with the God of Mischief, no one could really say for sure) but it was simply that their paths had crossed (as they were wont to do) during one of the team missions Thor was absent from, and one of his schemes and they were united by a singular cause. That, then, necessitated granting Loki access to Tony Stark’s network and databases.

Hence, both brothers now enjoying the fruits of his hard labor—and the real ones, as well! Dried berries, mangoes, jackfruit chips, and some expensive noodle soups that required only hot water to cook. Save for the standard-issued emergency rations, these were all souvenirs from Tony Starks worldly trips. 

All going, going, soon to be gone save for a few morsels and strips. Thor thought they ought to have saved some but Loki promised it was only going to be a short journey to their next destination, which was some vaguely lawless and sparsely populated floating island orbiting some moon or other, where they can escape their pursuers and find more food to eat.

“And where you’ll liberate me of the Gem of Infinite Suns?” Thor chuckled.

“That depends,” Loki answered.

“On what?”

“On whether or not you’ll pay for my dinner.” Loki smirked as Thor shook his head at him, popping in another dried mango. He sat on the floor, on his fur-lined coat, back to the back of his seat while Thor sat to his perpendicular, long legs out, almost touching Loki’s knees and between them rested Thor’s trusty Jarnbjorn. “I might let you hold onto it until tonight. And even this ship,” he spread out his hands, “just to prove to you I’ve changed.”

“Which part?” Thor snorted. “You’re still planning to steal this Gem as we speak, doubtless for some nefarious deed.”

“Indeed.”

“So what’s changed?”

“I’m,” Loki raised his own brow, “more generous now? I’m not planning your untimely demise, for one.”

“Not _yet_.”

“I’m being extra patient.” Loki spread his hands again. “See? You should be crying now.”

“I’ll think about it,” Thor replied. He reached for the bag of dried mangoes and Loki slid it to him. “How much longer until we get to your Evil HQ?”

“Not much longer, Brother. Who is actually, also secretly, my prisoner.”

“And how far are we from Earth?” Thor asked again, raising himself a little to look out the front window, as though he could see more than the stars flying past them in the blackness of space.

“Why are you so concerned, anyway?” Loki frowned, tone rising and brows falling in curiosity. “Is there a party you haven’t invited me to?”

With that sharpness in his voice, Thor found himself looking back to his brother who eyed him and demanded to know what was bothering him. It was useless, however, to say it was nothing—that was ultimately for Loki to say and only after he’d heard of Thor’s concern. He hadn’t made any plans to tell his brother about his thoughts, of course, but it seems like this was just a day of plans not going as expected.

Thor started with a shrug, trying to play the meaning behind his words down. “Jane and I are going to see a show on Thursday.” There. Not so difficult to say, after all.

But a little difficult to take in for Loki, it seems, who responded exactly how Thor expected him to—brows high, eyes round, lips parted to gape slightly. _Really?_ he could hear his face asking him. _Jane?_ To answer the silent questions, Thor nodded.

Seconds passed, then Loki whistled, shifting a little more comfortably on his coat. “And,” he began after another moment, “doth the Lady Sif know?”

Thor chuckled slightly at the old Asgardian dialect. “Aye,” he responded in kind, reaching for another dried mango. “The Lady Sif doth know.”

“And what didst she say?”

She said nothing, if Thor’s silence was anything to go by. But he only passed a strip of fruit through his lips and ate it.

Loki hissed, knowing the meaning behind the non-answer. He shook his head, “Brother, I know we’ve talked about you and Jane before but you and Sif, you have got _millennia_ to go.”

“I know, Loki,” Thor assured him, voice low.

“And our people aren’t quite in the habit of forgetting a slap in the face.”

“It’s _not_ a slap in the face, I’m not doing this behind her back!” Thor almost surprised himself with how quickly he rose to his defense, and how loudly he spoke it. He cleared his throat, shifting slightly. “The Midgardians call it a cool-off,” he went on after a pause.

“Are you sure that’s what it really is?” Loki persisted, eyeing Thor beneath raised brows. “Because if you ask me, it sounds a lot like—”

A planet, or what felt like it, slammed onto the side of the ship, throwing them off with the impact. Thor and Loki were instantly upon the raging screens across their display, glaring red while it screamed of so many warnings and pains, all of which could be summed up with:

“We got hit,” Thor announced, fingers flying across the dashboard as Loki shrugged on his coat. “Shield’s down and integrity’s down to 51%. What the Hel did they shoot us with and who the Hel hits ships in warp mode!”

“Don’t quote me on this but they’re probably galactic empires throwing a hissy fit.” Loki pointed up to one of the screens. “Over there.”

_Over there_ was a cluster of dots on the tail of their own, arranging themselves in a v-tipped formation, the foremost of which an arrow had indicated to be the bearer of Superior Firepower among its kin. 

“If we don’t shake them off, that thing is going to blow us to Ginnungagap, Gem and all,” Loki observed while Thor went through every button, lever, switch and dial in sight, all for no other reason, it seems, but to prompt the same ugly buzz and red letters on the screen. “Can you do that?”

“I’m _trying_ but this thing,” Thor began hitting the buttons with the force of his might, “won’t. Even. Work!” One last slam prompted another ugly beep. 

Another blast shook them, bringing down their already sordid numbers to even more hopeless depths. Thor began to scramble for the radio but even that seems to prefer responding in static no matter how hard he pressed the damn button. They had no choice but to escape, then—Thor was sure this ship came with some really nice escape pods though if worse came to worst, they could at least survive in space. They were Asgardians—he and Loki could do that. He’d figure out the rest of the plan once they had survived this inconvenience. 

“Well,” Loki began softly, with a voice that brought a chill down Thor’s spine. Because of course. _Of course._ “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

Thor slumped back to his seat, looking up to Loki with a tired look and a little sigh. Loki returned the expression with a tiny smile of his own, seemingly heavy with regret but only just slightly. “Oh, Loki.” Well, then—good talk. 

He was jumping for Jarnbjorn as soon as Loki’s dagger had hit the seat, right where his shoulder would have been. He parried the other with a ready swing from his ax, sending Loki’s blade flying off to their display with a deadly stab. 

This was _not_ how Thor imagined this mission to go— _at all_. That Loki would betray him eventually was already a given but the degree and the manner in which he was going to do it was always up in the air. He should have prepared for it, he thought, as he blocked and jumped, blades clashing every moment they were thrown, often literally, yet how was he supposed to have prepared for this? A duel inside a dying ship while they were being hammered from all sides. 

It was bad enough trying to keep his neck out of Loki’s business, it was worse that the battlefield, too, was quite literally trying to kill them both. Thor could hardly stay on his feet between the explosions and the tilting spacecraft. Sometimes it saved him by throwing off Loki’s aim but others, it undid his focus, too. 

A great groan reverberated the entire ship just as it started sagging towards the cockpit. Loki fell back with a flail and a grunt, sliding further off to the front panels while Thor took advantage of the strange balance by jumping and letting the artificial gravity take him to his brother, Jarnbjorn overhead, a great bellow from his mouth. Loki gaped at him and screamed, hiding behind his hand. Thor felt hollow in the pits of his stomach, knowing what would happen. 

Jarnbjorn split Loki’s chest. A flash of gold and green erupted from the point of contact. The ship righted itself just long enough for him to regain his footing as he whirled around the empty craft, by now the lights already dark and blinking, several broken parts coughing up sick sparks. Loki was a teleporter but he couldn’t imagine he’d have enough power to land on a planet from space. Or had he regrouped with his Shi’ar employers? “Loki?!” he roared. 

“Right here.”

The voice was as clear as day. Thor tensed his muscles to turn but a blow at the back of his chest knocked him down to his knees. He coughed—it wasn’t Loki’s most powerful spell but it was definitely one he wasn’t used to before. And the shock had kept him from breathing right, so he kept coughing as though he had swallowed a walnut wrong. 

“You know, I really didn’t want it to be this way,” Loki began his speech as he marched around his half-choking brother. “I had hoped for a clean job but some things, we just can’t control, can we?”

Thor wheezed, “Not one of your best lies,” and coughed. 

“Yes, well,” Loki pointed to his ax where he could be seen, “not one of your best weapons either.” He threw his hands up. “Anyway, so much for that. I’ll take this.” He passed Thor’s side, grabbing the Gem of Infinite Suns which Thor tried to stop but Loki’s magic was still working on him. “And you’ll take this!”

A blaze of heat burst out then at the back of Thor’s shoulder—like a knife that was made of fire, or the heat of a star’s core. Thor’s world resolved itself in white, boiling fever and a scream— _his_ scream. 

He fell to the floor and pounded it with his fists, trying to burn off the seed of Hel Loki had planted within him but as it is, he could barely feel his skin from the heat. His tears had dried up before they fell from his eyes. Thor tried to scream louder but nothing was helping—what the Hel had Loki done to him?! 

The ship moved—he was sliding back. It was only several ragged breaths later that he realized it was Loki who was pulling him. 

Cold steel landed behind his shoulders; he turned his cheek to it. Several notes beeped like they were played by fingers. 

“Set course for Earth,” he heard Loki say. 

“ _Voice activation required,_ ” the ship replied. 

“Thor’s Brother.”

The steel wall opened. Thor fell back with a grunt. Loki was a blurry illusion when he leaned over to drag him further into the room. Thor reached for him, tried to work his thick tongue to call to his brother. “L…luh…!”

Loki was gone before he could do it. The room closed and shuddered. 

Thor was gone before he could feel it fall.

—

He didn’t know how long he was out.

Thor woke up with a great gasp, desperately gathering breath. Wild eyes took stock of his cage as fast as he could make them—it was dark and cold, lights blinked and there was a map pointing him to Earth. There were windows and secret compartments—

Escape pod. Odin’s beard damn his brother, _Loki chucked him into an escape pod!_

“ _No_ ,” he roared and slammed himself to the door, banging on its window like a man banished from his house. “Loki!!” he cried through it but his voice was only for him to hear. 

Outside, the ship Loki stole from him was still there, tracing a drunken path but already so small, so far away. Its pursuers had formed around it, a perfect circle of bullies, firing away to their wicked hearts’ content. 

He should have expected the explosion thereafter but it still felt like his own heart shattering, like the ship. _No_ , he cried, like a desperate chant, sliding on his knees even as he pounded on the door. He should have been there. Damn the Norns, but he should have been there with his brother! 

“No…!” he whimpered, persistent with his fists, though every spirit of it had been drained now by his loss, his new loss. There was no saying, of course, with his brother, who seems to know a million and one ways in and out of Hel. But what if this was the last time? What if this time, this time he really could be… 

“Damn you, Loki,” Thor choked, hitting his head on the door, again and again and again. “Odin and The Norns damn you…!”


	5. Chapter 5

That excursion and rude escape left a sore spot on Thor; he didn’t speak of it. Not even when Tony, Steve, Sif or Carol or Jane reached out. He was never one to think so selfishly of his comrades and his closer friends, but in the matters of his complicated family, and most especially that of his brother, he understood that they were not the most willing audience. And really, he didn’t know anyone who might lighten his mourning if he shared it to them. 

Anyone…but Gamora. Six months after he last saw his brother, the Guardians of the Galaxy paid them an emergency call. Their new craft Ryder had been shot during a particularly messy rescue mission which left their right wing and a part of their tail badly ruined. Any time now, their pursuers would spot them on Earth since they hadn’t camouflaged their trail good enough during their approach so the plan was to get Tony, Rocket and Quill to fast track the repairs before the enemy craft broke atmosphere. And maybe get Shuri to help out, too, if they could just. Locate her. Or Strange with his teleportation portals. 

Thor left them to take care of that—his business was to watch the skies along with Clint and Gamora who was armed with a gun that looked wider than her shoulders. 

That was when Gamora spoke to him about his brother. “I saw your brother, by the way,” she shared suddenly after a lull in their conversation. Thor felt he must have jumped at the surprising news. “I was in Alpha Centauri to meet a contact. I was waiting for her in one of the casinos when I saw him in one of the gambling tables.”

“How is he?” Thor could barely keep his emotions from his voice. 

Gamora cocked a brow at his concern. “You sound worried,” she observed. “He looked like he was having the time of his life. He was in disguise, mind. As a young teen but I could tell it was him by the glint of his eyes. He was across one of the gambling lords’ lap, laughing and teasing him.” Thor chuckled and shook his head. “We caught each other’s eye,” he stopped and turned to listen, “then he winked at me and put his finger on his lips.”

“I don’t suppose you knew what happened to the poor gambler after that.”

Gamora shook her head. “Whatever it is, I can’t imagine a good ending.” She was the first one who found out about Loki’s latest death. And then Steve and Tony, who shared it with Carol. Then Jane, then Sif. 

And then the jotnar attacked. 

Thor had already known that this would happen when he’d caught wind of it in some bar in one of the alternate Earths and had rushed back to warn the Avengers about it. But Sif stopped him just as he had landed in Asgardia—the jotnar were moving swiftly and she was just on her way to Jotunheim, dressed for battle and winter, when he appeared. The best thing Thor could do then was to send a raven to his friends before he took off with Sif. 

It was just too bad that he and the warrior had gotten stuck in a cave-in after finding out the jotnar’s plans. It took them days of careful and persistent movements to unearth themselves, ample time for both friends to catch up as they kept each other warm, but as soon as they were out and had slayed the giants searching for their corpses, they were off to their own missions—Sif to round up the Asgardian army, Thor to rejoin his Avenger friends. 

He was too late by the time he’d found them—the big battle was over. They’d waited for Thor and his army to make an appearance but when they could not see any signs of them, they resulted to Plan B, which was to utilize whatever skills, money, magic and weapon they had in their arsenal to pretend they were the entire Asgardian army. Stark called it the Home Alone Protocol. Casualty was unavoidable, though they’d been able to keep it at a minimum, all things considered. 

Thor shook his head, gasping in relief. His raven hadn’t been sent for naught. “My friends,” he began with a heavy voice, “I wish I could have been present during the attack but I must congratulate you,” he looked at Steve and then at Tony in the eyes, “for what you’ve done. Defending the people without great casualty against an army of Frost Giants is no small thing.”

He knew something was off when both captain and billionaire exchanged glances. “Actually,” Tony confirmed his suspicions soon after, scratching his cheek, “there’s something else you need to know. See, the Frost Giants didn’t come alone…”

It made sense, of course. The last time the jotnar had attacked Midgard had been a little over a millennium ago. Much had changed since—the Earth had grown warmer, lighter after so many earthquakes despite the buildings that now riddled most of its land. They would need someone who knew this face of Earth to lead them. A guide. 

He knew who he was even before they led him to his cell, but he never expected to see him like this—looking thin and worn, dejected. His black hair was a mess, and he was dressed only in his green undershirt and black trousers, his coat, chest armor, gloves and boots missing, his sheaths empty. His hands, cuffed between his knees, were both red and purple, his black nail polish scraped clean off some fingers. 

“We found him more or less like this,” the Falcon said, crossing his arms over his chest while Thor stared on in some surprise, both of them watching through the window in the door. “He was in the rubble. Practically had to peel him off like a sticker.”

“Who,” Thor began, finally facing his fellow Avenger, keeping his back turned away, “who did this? Was it Banner?” 

“Never saw him anywhere near that guy,” Sam Wilson shook his head. “Could be Carol, though. Who knows, she’s been going through something personal this late. Funny thing is,” he shifted a little, readjusting his arms, “first thing he did when we cuffed him was to laugh, and say, ‘So Thor didn’t come.’ Did we miss a memo here?” He looked closely at Thor. 

But Thor only shook his head. “I did not know we would find him here either.” He never knew when he would see his brother again. 

The door made an ugly sound when it opened, causing Loki to jump. He wasn’t always like this, more usually so calm and in good humor that Thor had to freeze just as he’d stepped through. His brother snapped to him, green eyes wide. Bruises colored one of his eyes and the part of his nose bridge, looking exactly like someone who’d had a close encounter with the Hulk’s fist.

Despite all that, he had the ease to snort and slump back to the wall. “Well, _there_ you are,” he said. Thor glanced at Falcon over his shoulder, hoping that the man could leave them alone but realized at the last second that he couldn’t ask that of a fellow Avenger—and one with Steve’s principles—without rousing suspicion. So he just nodded, a thanks, before he went in. The door was locked behind him. Sam would probably be standing watch, should anything happen.

“How was Jotunheim?” Loki went on, shifting aside as Thor sat next to him on his thin pallet, the older man twisting to face his brother. “Heard you and Sif took a vacation. Is it true what I heard, then?”

“What?” Thor was instantly on alert.

Loki raised a brow at him. “That there’s a new skiing resort in one of the cliffs over there. Did you and Sif take a look?” When Thor snorted and shook his head with a low chuckle, he smirked.

Thor nodded at his jab. “You’re all right, after all.”

“It’ll take the entire cosmos and all the timelines to quash me, Brother. I’m sure you know that.” Loki’s hands rose until the chains stopped them. “Still. I could be better. Can’t even bite my own damn nails.”

“Loki, stop that,” Thor groaned. “It’s a disgusting habit of yours. I thought you painted your nails to stop that?”

“When did anything ever stop me from myself, Thor?”

Thor shook his head. Loki looked on darkly, a man unable to do as he wanted, and if there was anything he despised the most, he knew it was chains. He hated being trapped, hated being removed from freedom. This shapeshifter who would risk his life, literally, just to be free.

“What the Hel happened, Loki?” he asked.

“You ever wondered what it feels like for someone who isn’t a Thor to be at the receiving end of a jotun’s mace?” Loki popped a brow at his brother.

Thor blinked at him. “They…” He shook his head. “I have a hard time wrapping my head around this. I understand you’re too little to be respected among their ranks but they can’t be so big, they didn’t see you when they were swinging that mace.”

“Oh believe me,” Loki laughed. “They swung true.”

“But you led them here.”

“Oh yes,” Loki said, smiling at his brother. “I led them to a bustling city in broad daylight where surely the sunny skies, the overreaching skyscrapers, the fumes of the traffic and the proximity to the Avengers would make their invasion easier than child’s play. Come now, Thor, it doesn’t take a Norn to figure it all out, why they attacked me.”

“You’re telling me,” Thor ventured, eyes screwed tight because nothing still made sense to him, “that after everything you did for them, they still betrayed you?”

“ _Because I was trying to save everybody!!_ ” Loki roared, his voice bursting in wild echoes in the tiny cell. Perhaps nothing could be more confusing to Thor than his furious statement, so Loki huffed and fell back to the wall, tugging on the chains again, itching to get at his fingers.

“What?” Thor whispered after another moment had passed, staring hard at Loki. Why would he do it? What was at stake for him here? Loki was never interested in anything, unless he got something out of it. “But,” he tried again, brows arching tightly, “w, why would you do that? I never thought you cared about the humans as much as I do.”

“No, I still don’t, but I don’t want to live in a universe where the Frost Giants are in control,” Loki replied, snorting again. He looked at his brother, frowning. “Without Asgard in her proper realm, there’s nothing to stop them from asserting their dominance.”

“So you brought them here to Earth.”

“I was in Jotunheim, too,” Loki revealed soon after, meeting his brother in the eye. “I made myself welcome in the court of the new king after I told him I pretended to be Odin to destabilize the nine realms and soon destroy Asgard. Well,” he rolled his eyes, “kind of. I made myself welcome in his private solar then made myself indispensable in his war council.”

“And how did you get there?”

“I met a pretty talkative chap in Alpha Centauri.” Loki dismissed his gambling friend with an awkward wave of his hand, despite Thor’s recognition, “but that’s a long story.” He went on, “I was there when you were stranded.” He glanced at Thor to see his face. “I knew you and Sif had sneaked into the realm but kept my lips sewed. I could have gone and saved you from the snow but I knew that would leave the army of Frost Giants without a leash and we would be far too late to stop them if I’d tried. So I left you there—thought you two might appreciate a little privacy—and crossed the spaceways to Midgard where I proceeded to lay as much traps as I could before I was found out, leading the children away from the battle. And that’s,” he pointed to his face, “when this happened.”

“And what of those children?”

“I don’t know,” Loki said, shaking his head. He shrugged sharply. “But I tried.” If anything happened to those children...well, it would be a tragedy but Thor doubted he would gain any sympathy from Loki, who always saw the fragility of life as a universal truth that could not be helped.

Thor shook his head, turning to his hands. There was too much to unpack here; Loki had been captured without good reason. He was the God of Lies, of course, but Thor also knew that he hated the Frost Giants. And in this one instance, they shared similar goals again, albeit with slightly different motivations.

“Where will they attack next?” Thor asked.

Loki shook his head. “Asgardia was next in the list.” Thor’s heart jumped. “I told them that Asgardia will surely stretch itself too thin defending Migard that it would be easy to conquer them at the same time. It’s easy to lie when you’re telling the truth. But now that Earth’s subjugation has failed in the first wave, I’m sure they’re going to rearrange their timeline. Perhaps Nidavellir would be next on the list—as soon as the galaxy would have heard of their attack, everyone would be flocking to the dwarves for some weapons.”

“And where on Earth will they attack next?” Thor knew the Frost Giants couldn’t be discouraged so easily, not a proud, scorned race like that.

Loki, however, only shrugged at him again, a tiny smile on his face. “Perhaps...somewhere more comfortable? Somewhere they’ve been to before, without the help of a guide.” Norway. That place had always been close to the hearts of those who were part of the Nine Realms. Loki opened up his palms. “But I can’t say for sure. I don’t have the plans in my hands right now.”

They never had to worry about that place, about these things before the Nine Realms were lost. His father would have kept such insurgencies at bay but that…was still a wound that was too deep to pick. His father was a liar…and a murderer and a thief, for sure. But he was also his father, and the All-father of the Nine Realms who led centuries of peace among them under his rule.

Or, well, that was what he still thought. 

There was no saying now, what really went on under the shadows of the realms that he had been too naive to see, but that was neither here nor there. Right now, the threat of the Frost Giants was still very much a threat. And they needed to stop it. Thor needed all the help he could get to stop it.

“I,” Thor began suddenly, reaching back under his cape, “passed by the kitchen on the way here. I um…I thought you might be hungry so I grabbed a few things for you.” 

He’d held it all in a brown drawstring bag, one of a number that he owned. Loki only watched as he set it between them, where onlookers would not see it from the door while Thor kept his back to it. When Thor said nothing more, Loki sighed, and dragged the bag to him to see what his brother had proffered. Two bottles of beer, some chocolates and biscuits.

He brought out a stout jar with a red checked lid, an orange jam which didn’t really fit any of the foodstuff in the bag, but soon enough he made the connection—eyes growing wide. Loki stared at Thor, looking more honest in his shock than ever.

Thor smirked slightly. “It was the best I could find.” He knew how much his brother hated jam, and perhaps that was one of the reasons he decided to pack it. He would never miss an opportunity to prank him when he could afford it.

The other reason became clear when sirens blared and roused the entire Avengers headquarters awake. It was still dark then, an hour shy of sunrise.

Thor was the last to join his team which had congregated around Loki’s cell. The door was open but very much intact. The air smelled sickly of burnt oranges, caramel, and something else that only Thor could pick up: _Loki magic._

The inside of the room told the whole story: a massive chasm, where something like a low-grade explosive must have gone off, filled the entire floor area, while the wall bore a message in a hasty cursive that read, _Thanks for the jam! ♥_. It leaked of the said accursed thing, and burned as if it had been written in oil set alight. As for Loki himself, he was gone.

Thor felt all eyes turn to him. Now, it was anyone’s guess yet again where Loki would next materialize. Thor believed they could leave him alone, though. For now. He and they had better things to do.

“Well then,” he said to the Avengers, “I guess it’s time to get to work.”


	6. Chapter 6

That was the last he’d seen of his brother. Again. In a long time.

It was a thought that crossed his mind as he gazed up to the red moon hanging so lowly from the dark sky, another sighting that had not been made on Earth in decades. Following an old conversation he had with Gamora, he had, very discreetly, employed a number of means and persons of great skill to keep track of his brother’s whereabouts. His official reason was that, as the reigning king of Asgard, it was his duty to look after not only his kingdom but those that his kingdom affected. The Nine Realms had, by all means, returned to existence, now governed by the Congress of Worlds where each one of them was represented, no longer mimicking the old monarchy of Odin. He did this service for them, he said. They must always know about any news that could be important to their union.

And Loki was always one of them. Loki was always news worth hearing.

“Of all the billions of planets in the cosmos to see this spectacular event, you really had to settle for Earth, didn’t you?”

Of course—not everything gets to him. The trickster was always as slippery as he could be, after all. And there was nothing he could do about that.

“I mean,” Loki flung a hand to the moon as he found his place beside Thor, who whipped at his appearance in shock, “have you been to Mars? It’s much better up there.”

“So why don’t you watch from there?”

“I get anywhere near Opportunity’s sensors, Stark is going to know.” Loki propped up an elbow on one of his knees. “And I don’t like him being on my tail.”

“Did you do something again?”

“What?” Loki whirled at Thor who straightened his back and crossed his thick arms with a warning look, though not quite threatening now while his feet were dangling off the cliff he was moon gazing on. “Do something? Me?” Loki’s hands flew to his chest, his eyes wide and shocked. “Again? _Me?_ ”

“Try harder.”

Loki snorted, shaking his head. “You’re no fun.” He hung his feet off the ledge, kicking as he stared up the sky.

“So what are you doing here, Brother?” Thor asked, shifting a little to look at his sibling better. “If you’re looking for a place to hide, whatever it is you’re saying you didn’t do, Earth will give you no respite.”

“I just came here to see you,” Loki said, nodding to his brother. “I heard you lost your arm.”

Thor did. Just one of those things that happened to him between their last meeting and this one. He looked self-consciously at his left arm, now a golden replica of his fleshy limb.

“And I see you’ve gone back to the eyepatch,” Loki added, leaning back to rest his weight on his elbows. Thor reacted by reaching for his accessory. “What happened to the eye?”

“I lost it,” Thor revealed, slouching forward to rest his arms on his knees, “in a feat of great anger. It’s not exactly made for raging Gods of Thunder.” He chuckled, head falling as he shook it. “How I must look to you now.” He turned to Loki who propped a brow at him. “Broken. Not quite so new and dashing as when we were younger. Lost my eye, and now my arm.” He waved his left arm.

“You know, glamor isn’t all that difficult a magic to learn,” Loki shared. “It took me what, a year to master?”

Thor laughed a little shaking his head. “I am going to live with these forever,” he said, inspecting his golden fingers again. “I may as well live with them now.”

“I know you’ve always been vain—”

“Now look who’s talking,” Thor scoffed at Loki. 

“—but I didn’t think you’d be _this_ concerned about your good looks.” Loki shrugged. “I know Jane doesn’t mind.”

Thor eyed his brother despite the little smile playing on his lips. “Shut up, Loki.”

Loki raised his hands a little as if to throw it. “I’m just saying!”

Thor still shook his head. Then looked up to the moon, which looked less red and more amber now, as it dragged itself along its cycle. “Truly, nothing makes you think of time than when you think about what you’ve lost,” he said suddenly. “You and I, we’re the lucky ones who barely feel it moving. And yet it’s there, moving us.”

“Or are we really the lucky ones?” Loki replied. “Perhaps,” he pointed to the skies, “if we’re counting our blessings by giant red moons, we are. But we can’t say the same of the others. Those little friends we made, our fleeting romances.” He looked at Thor who accepted his point with another smile and a bow. “Or the times that we lived in. Wars are going on in every corner of the universe, but the next time this moon comes around here, this realm might be the one embroiled in war. And you’ll look at it then and think back here, wistfully, about the time where the only things you’ve lost were your eye and your arm.”

“Always quite the optimist, aren’t you?”

“One of us has to be,” Loki said, taking up after his brother’s sarcasm. “On the bright side, we’ll forget about those things, eventually.”

“If we live long enough.” Thor smirked, returning to the moon. “Do you think Father ever forgot anything?”

From the corner of his eye, he could see Loki whip to him in some shock. He had already accepted his place in the family tree not too long ago, but he and Thor still hadn’t spoken at length about it, despite the time that had passed. How do you decide what is still fresh, then? And when is the right time? When could they start to talk about what they had and what they missed?

Loki gazed down to his knees, then up the moon. “You mean besides my true parentage and our sister?” he asked as a start. Thor chuckled as Loki frowned slightly and shook his head. “Hard to imagine but I wouldn’t be surprised. I suppose we’ll know when we cross that bridge.”

“Suppose you’re right,” Thor agreed. He faced his brother. “You know, you haven’t yet told me what you did when you ruled Asgard.”

“Really?” Loki said, looking back to his brother. “Right now? It’s rather late for that, isn’t it?”

“Oh come on, the moon’s still high,” Thor said, pointing at the celestial orb in the sky. “And I’d much rather ask it now than when the memory’s gone all foggy. Come on, Loki. I promise I won’t be mad.”

Loki let out a bemused cackle. “Sorry to disappoint you but all things considered, I actually did a good job as king!” 

“Humor me.” Thor crossed his arms. 

“I think you mean _impress_ you,” Loki corrected. “Which I can understand, you’d never have imagined it was otherwise possible to lower the tax rate for the people. I mean, I figured, there’s a lot of gold in Asgard’s vault that would hardly be missed…” Gold, which they now knew, was not exactly sourced by benevolent means. 

There was a lot of bragging that was made, and a number of challenges and rebuttals which did not spare Thor’s governance. They talked until the moon had hidden, about the years they missed and the scars that painted them. 

When Thor awoke, the sun was up, and his cape was damp from the earth’s dew. The campfire which he and Loki had built was nothing more than cold smoke and embers now. 

He should have known that Loki would be gone by the morning. His brother slept on the other side of the fire, on his coat but there was nothing there that could have marked his presence. Thor rose carefully, stretching his muscles. It was time for him to get back to Asgard. 

“Leaving so soon?” Loki’s voice cut clearly through the quiet morning air, pulling Thor to whirl around and catch his brother reappearing from within the trees, dressed now in his accouterments, armor and coat. “You havenʼt even had breakfast yet.”

Thor shrugged and tossed a hand towards him. “Well, I donʼt see you with one either.”

“Yes,” Loki rolled his eyes, “because ever since you became king, everything must be served to you in a silver platter. Yes?” He smiled condescendingly at Thor who shook his head and took his turn to roll his eyes. “No, I thought we might go hunting.”

“Hunting?” Well, that was new. Thor didn’t hide the surprise in his voice. He stood with his weight on one leg, folding his arms over his chest. “Is this a trick? I thought you disliked hunting.”

“Not as much as I dislike being hungry.” Loki popped a brow. “And I only dislike it when you stop me from laying my traps for the catch.”

“Because it’s cheating!”

“Whatever, Coward. Come on,” he jutted his head back, “I saw a wild animal back there while I was relieving myself.” 

“What wild animal?” Thor felt the hair on his back stand defensively.

“I donʼt know,” Loki shook his head and shrugged in confusion. “Something or other. If I knew it before, Iʼve forgotten it now.” 

“That wild animal might be protected,” Thor explained. “Besides, havenʼt you got other places to be?” Loki always had other places to be. That was why their reunions were always so short-lived, on top of being so messed up and chaotic. Thor had learned to expect it by now. It made disappointments sting less.

And yet…perhaps by the grace of the Norns or his father…sometimes…once in a blue moon as the Midgardians liked to call it, fate could be kind to him and his brother. “Now? Hmm, let me think.” Loki tapped his chin and looked up briefly, for exactly one second, before he faced Thor and said, “No.”

No—for whatever reason. There was no saying what sort of ideas, plans, schemes filled Loki’s head and this may only be the precursor to something mildly irritating or perhaps even dreadful, but he’ll take it for now. He might as well enjoy his brother’s company before things went south—as they so often did for the two of them. Life was not short for the both of them, but moments of peace were always in short supply.

Loki shared him a little smirk, and he smiled in turn.

“Fine,” he conceded, reaching to catch Storm Breaker as she soared to his hand. “ Letʼs take a look, then.”


End file.
